Native Rhode Islanders Jason Macari and Steve Gibree took a chance in 2001, when they purchased Summer Infants Products Inc., a company that had been founded in 1984 to market a then-new invention, the baby bouncer seat.
In the long run, Macari and Gibree knew, the existing product line wouldn’t be able to withstand competition.
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“They had toys and a baby bouncer,” Macari said, “but a lot of other competitors [already] were doing better bouncers” than Summer Infant’s trademark Comfort Seat.
Since 2001, however, Macari and Gibree have transformed the company – now called Summer Infant Inc. – and have grown its sales substantially in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.
In August, having outgrown their North Smithfield facility, the pair broke ground on a new 52,000-square-foot plant, in the Highland Industrial Park in Woonsocket. And now, to finance further growth, they’re preparing to go public.
“We’ve been on a pretty significant growth curve,” said Macari, who is president and CEO. “It was probably doing a million in sales in 2001, and last year, it did $35 million. And this year, it’s $26 million for just the first half of the year.”
But Summer Infant has kept “outstripping our capital,” he said. To raise more capital, they worked with a New York venture capital firm, KBL Healthcare Ventures, to create a special-purpose shell company to buy Summer Infant and take it public.
Formed in December 2004, KBL Healthcare Acquisition Corp. II made an initial public offering in April 2005; as of June 30, the company had about $51.2 million in a trust account to buy Summer Infant.
Under the terms of the deal, which was announced Sept. 5 and is still pending, Summer Infant’s owners will hold stock in KBL, and the current management team will remain in place, but KBL founder Dr. Marlene Krauss will become chairman of the board. The company will continue to operate as Summer Infant Inc.
“Thirty million dollars is going to be injected into the company,” Macari said. “It’s a very exciting time in our company’s history.”
Macari and Gibree turned Summer Infant around by drawing on their 20 years of product development experience at children’s product companies such as Hasbro and Safety 1st.
“We learned a lot about product development at Hasbro – and I took a detour into developing medical instruments – but we met up again at Safety 1st,” Macari recalled.
“The catalysts for buying the company were that we know the market very well, and we work hard to come up with new items. We do really well taking simple products and adding value.”
Today, Summer Infant sells safety gates, bed rails, potty seats, baby baths, bouncers, audio and video monitors, thermometers and many other health and safety items.
“Of the original product line, there are only a few things left,” said Gibree, who is executive vice president. “There’s the bouncer and one toy.”
Though the types of products they sell may seem basic, Summer Infants’ versions often have premium features. For example, the $40 Soothing Spa and Shower Baby Bath has a removable whirlpool unit that can also be used in a full-size tub. And a dual video monitor, priced at $150, allows parents to watch two darkened rooms on the same monitor.
“In general, our products have a tendency to be mid- to upper-tier pricing, but have a lot of features,” Macari said.
And, with the increased capital in sight, more products than ever are on the horizon.
“We’re excited about the opportunity to be a public company, and what really excites me is the ability to develop smaller products that we have experience in, and new products,” Macari said. “We want to continue to grow. We have a lot of developments in mind for the bedding area, the wheel goods area and travel gear, and we have a lot of energy going into our existing lines.”
Having grown their company by about 200 percent per year since they acquired it, Macari and Gibree now want to go farther and make their brand a household name.
“We want to grow the company and want it to be a major player in the baby product industry,” Macari said. “When people say Fisher Price and Safety 1st, we want to be in that same sentence. We want to be a name that moms trust.”
